School assemblies

'Home time' in our inner city primary school classroom meant putting our chairs up on our desks 'for the cleaners', standing with head bowed, eyes shut and hands folded in prayer, and singing Now the day is over.

Every day!

We had CofE morning assemblies (the 'fancies' were excused till the notices) but I found them deadly boring and I think some of the staff looked bored too. Contributed to my lifelong resistance to religeon in general. Often used to keep people in their place, persuade them to fight in wars, etc.

the social psychology of a school morning assembly is that it it is emotionally binding, and thus an opportunity for the head to rein force the school ethics.

Since most decent schools nowadays are not religiously divisive most school assemblies don't include blatantly religious rituals.

I am certainly old enough and Christian enough to enjoy the old 'Hymns and Modern' and still do, however I can move with the times.

The Christian icon, Jesus, aka love, is a moving icon .

I've been to a few funerals recently. Very few people (young or old) seem to know the hymns- the sort of hymns we used to sing at school. But the families of the deceased obviously think these songs have meaning.
Seems like this UK is now a secular country with a sentimental attitude towards Christian tradition. So not many folk seem to want children in schools to learn the songs and prayers, but on the other hand there is nothing to replace them. Churches are still popular for weddings and funerals. Why is this? And what can or should replace prayers amd hymns?

What do GNetters think?

We never had daily morning assemblies at school here - either at primary or secondary. At best, they were once a week and often not even that.
As for funerals, I don't see the point in having hymns if the deceased wasn't a religious person and didn't want them. At both of my late in-laws' funerals, we had a humanist celebrant and just played music that we knew they liked or was relevant to their lives.

Singing hymns in assembly as a child was a joy - simply because they had such good tunes and having a good sing in the morning woke you up and set you up for the day. But, as Tim Minchin says in his "White Wine in the Sun" - "Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords but the lyrics are spooky"

Our local school does have assembly with singing but it is usually themed around values: kindness etc.

I think the law (1988) still says that there should be a "daily act of collective worship" - faith schools (even when state funded) have more stringent rules about the religious element although pupils and teachers can opt out.

It's crazy in 2026 and most schools just ignore it (so what's the point of the rule!?) and have a weekly assembly with a broadly moral theme.

My local primary starts the day for every child from age 4 upwards with 15 minutes of music - little ones play ocarina, older ones recorder - which is brilliant. There's lots to be said for starting the day with music and a jolly good sing - it does not have to be religious.

That, Franski, is a BIG question and so far there is no consensus on the answer to the problem.

People do need rituals with meaning. My own feeling is that Christianity has everything in its favour ----rituals and moral code-----except for belief in a supernatural way of being.

With people increasingly educated according to Enlightenment science, fewer and fewer are inclined to take traditional Christian supernaturalism seriously.

I find it easy to combine the spirit of most of the old hymns with scientific knowledge. If anyone is interested I can try to help them to understand .

Secondary schools haven't had a school hall big enough for a daily whole school assembly for literally half a century! On the odd occasion when everyone gets together - end of year? -(1000 teenagers sitting on the floor in a sports hall without their bags) it takes 15 minutes to get them in and 10 minutes to get them out. Then they have to return to their tutor base to collect their bags. Never a good way to start the day!

Btw only approx 6% of UK population goes to church once a fortnight or more.

I can see that a Christian assembly might be inappropriate nowadays, but when we had them in the 50s I really loved them. I am not at all religious, but I like singing and I like words, so the traditional hymns and prayers were a joy to me. Every morning we had a hymn, the Lord’s Prayer, another prayer, a Bible reading, a psalm from the Oxford Psalter sung to Anglican Chant, and a short talk from the headmistress. We filed out to music played on the piano by pupils. Jewish and Catholic girls came in for the notices.

I don’t think I ever believed any of it, but I still loved it and learnt a great deal. I was sorry that my offspring didn’t hàve anything similar in senior school - they did at primary level.

argymargy

I think religion is for home, places of worship and/or community groups, not school. I don't have a problem with school assemblies with songs or poems or whatever they want to do, just not religion.

Completely agree.

Religious assemblies are held still in CoE and Catholic Schools.

Personally I don’t think religious assemblies should be held (daily or weekly) in anything else other than faith schools.

I do think however that Religious Education should be taught as a subject, covering all religions.

Agree. Very uplifting when I was at a school assembly with the young voices singing their little hearts out. Wonderful. 💐

Secondary schools cannot accommodate a daily assembly. Their halls can only fit one Year Group in at a time, so at most each student attends one assembly a week. It is decades since it was a collective act of daily worship. Schools, like UK society, are largely secular and cannot get their staff to lead a daily worship.

Cossy

Religious assemblies are held still in CoE and Catholic Schools.

Personally I don’t think religious assemblies should be held (daily or weekly) in anything else other than faith schools.

I do think however that Religious Education should be taught as a subject, covering all religions.

I get all my religious education off the daily news. All Arabs want to wipe all Jews off the face of the earth a la Ayatollahs and similarly all Jews want to wipe all Arabs off the face of the earth a la Netenyahu and each reavows their intentions on daily basis. We are a Christian nation but we've allowed others to obliterate that fact. Prior to the 1st Gulf War British service men and women stationed in Saudi Arabia were not allowed Christian services prior to the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein s invasion.

Getting staff to do any kind of assembly service is quite an ask on top of their other work. It takes quite a lot of preparation and organisation. Even getting the children to perform their own assembly entails a lot of effort.

I was lucky in that my grandfather was a clergyman, so, along with my stage school training, I had a bit of an inkling how to energise a larger audience twice a week! We invited the parents along on occasions. I also had the services of the school chaplain who engaged the children in activities and role plays. There was certainly none of the hellfire and damnation preaching, but we got a Christian based message across.
I'm not sure how I'd go about it these days.

NotSpaghetti

I would NOT like to hear our National Anthem to be sung on the USA level!
😱

Nor me. And the thought of putting my hand on my heart while singing it makes me shudder. It is so very non-British and so very American but each to their own.

Even in the 50/60s when I was a t school we had assmbly with hymns every day, but it didn't actually mean anything. It was just sung by rote because it was expected. Each to their own when it comes to religion, personally it's not for me. Singing the school song was more popular.

At school during the early 60s our headmistress was way ahead of her time.
We split for prayers into Christian, Jewish and Moslem, then joined together for any other school business. There were not many girls of religions other than Christian but their traditions were respected.
I am much against Christianity being forced on children. This, like other religions, has been used for years to control the masses. It has very little relevance today.

My experience was much like yours YorkLady. Assembly began and ended with classical music played on an organ by the school's music teacher. Through this I became aware of a broad range of classical music that otherwise I would not have come across.

It's actually a legal requirement in England and Wales for schools to have a daily act of worship that is broadly Christian. There are campaigns, mainly by the Humanists, to abolish it but it's still the law at the moment.

Our country, its culture and its basic laws are based on Christianity. It's a shame that assemblies have changed so much. For those who think that Christian teaching shouldn't be part of the school syllabus, can I ask when you last went to a museum or art gallery? Because many of our most beautiful paintings and sculptures are to do with biblical accounts. If you don't know your bible, much of those art works would mean so little to you. Sad.

The Christian icon, Jesus, aka love, is a moving icon.
For me it is the opposite. A grim icon of a man being tortured in an ancient barbaric ritual. I hate children being exposed to this.
Is a Jesus's equivalent were to return now and the whole scenario be reenacted it would be a modern image of torture that people hurt g round their necks .... a gun maybe?

School didn't teach me to "know my bible". In fact, I still don't know it that well. Nevertheless, I can appreciate paintings and sculptures influenced by Christianity, just as I appreciate art influenced by other religions and pre-religions.

I'm of the opinion that assemblies shouldn't be Christian, unless in a faith school. Unfortunately, the history of education in England means that a high percentage of primary schools are CofE and parents have no choice.

chattykathy

It's actually a legal requirement in England and Wales for schools to have a daily act of worship that is broadly Christian. There are campaigns, mainly by the Humanists, to abolish it but it's still the law at the moment.

You're right, although I think it's often officially ignored.

I loved assemblies at school in the seventies. At primary school, some assemblies were for the whole school and some were for either the infants only or the juniors only, depending on the day of the week. Always a hymn, prayers, including the Lord's Prayer, a moral story and notices. Most teachers could play the piano well enough for assemblies but my favourite was my top infants' teacher who, when it was her turn to, would play us out to Country Gardens, which was her party piece. She would often choose my favourite song when it was the infants only assembly - Little Bird, I have heard, what a lovely song you sing. Another favourite infant song was Daisies are our silver, buttercups our gold. In the juniors, we graduated to a hymn book with an orange cover. When a Knight won his spurs, He who would true valour see, When lamps are lighted in the town. All rousing. When l was eight, my first headmaster retired and we practised his favourite hymn for weeks: The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended, which is one of my favourite hymns to this day. It was a county school rather than a church school but it was always overtly Christian. In addition to assemblies and RE, which was called Scripture in the infants, we said grace before our school dinners and always ended the day with a prayer. I have very happy memories.